


Layers and layers

by iridescentglow



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Falls on the less disturbing end of the Hannigram spectrum, M/M, Magic Realism, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentglow/pseuds/iridescentglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will invades Hannibal’s memory palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layers and layers

**Author's Note:**

> As established in the books, Hannibal has built an elaborate “memory palace” in his mind: a series of rooms that hold memories he is able to revisit and even “live” inside.
> 
> Written for a [kink meme](http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/) prompt.

Hannibal had not yet filled Will’s regular appointment slot. He’d had enquiries, of course, but none that particularly interested him. For the moment, he was content to leave the slot open. He used the time – resting comfortably in his high-ceilinged office, in the dwindling light of day – to enter his memory palace.

Seated upright, hands flat against the smooth mahogany of his desk, Hannibal’s only physical movement lay in his thumbs. He traced occasional circles in the wood, as his consciousness spiralled downward into the depths of his mind. That snatched hour at the end of the day was peaceful for Hannibal. It was a release from the banality of his patients, of meetings with Jack Crawford, of the cluck-cluck-clucking of his acquaintances over Will Graham’s mental state.

Perhaps inevitably, Hannibal’s thoughts – as he strode through the cool, clean corridors of his memory palace – tended often toward Will. It was Will’s hour, after all. Though Hannibal had not been to see Will since that first day in the Baltimore State Hospital, he knew that Professor Graham’s trial was coming up. It was to be the trial of the century, according to TattleCrime.com.

It was a short walk through Hannibal’s mind to the room that enclosed Wolf Trap on a cloudy day. Will’s small house had few secrets left to yield, although on this day, Hannibal examined the mismatched utensils in the kitchen with a faint sense of amusement. Hannibal had taken the liberty of removing the dogs from his memory of the house. He’d also removed the sour, layered stink that belonged to the house and so, in his mind, it smelled like pine and cold air.

Memories of Will himself appeared occasionally in corners of this room, although they excited only a vague stir of interest in Hannibal. It was true that people existed in Hannibal’s mind more vividly than they existed in the minds of others (those who didn’t cultivate their memories). For most mortals, people were remembered in crude sketches. For Hannibal, they were remembered in portraits, finely detailed in a broad palette of colours and brushstrokes.

Yet people in his memory palace still remained two-dimensional. Fragmentary. Thousands of people roamed the halls alongside him and he could (and often did) talk to them. But he could not converse with them. After all, he would always know exactly what they were about to say.

Idly, Hannibal watched again the image of Will seated on his front stoop, shuddering and broken. Hannibal added the scent of blood to the milieu and licked his lips. Yet the memory had already become threadbare, like a toy stroked thin by a child’s hand. Hannibal turned away. He considered and then rejected revisiting other iterations of Will in other rooms of his memory palace.

Hannibal had already drifted towards the door, ready to cut across time and space to a room that held a particularly transcendent Bolshoi production, when he was caught off guard by a voice behind him.

“You fucking monster.”

Hannibal turned to see Will, full-bodied in front of him. Will’s eyes blazed with hatred and his presence brought with it a sharp, musky scent. This Will – it was immediately obvious to Hannibal – was not a memory.

The realization startled Hannibal out of his own thoughts and deposited him back in the banality of reality. He looked down at his hands, which rested against his desk. They were trembling.

*

Will was dreadfully ill-attired for the opera.

Seated beside Hannibal within the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, Will wore his green prison jumpsuit. He was unshaven, his curls matted against his scalp. He slouched like a petulant teenager and spent his time glaring at Hannibal, rather than watching the performers on stage.

Will was the same way at the Philharmonic in Berlin, at the theatre in London, at the ballet in Moscow. He remained a slouching, resentful ball-and-chain that dragged behind Hannibal everywhere he went within his memory palace.

After his initial outburst, Will remained silent. He said nothing at all; he was just… there. In whichever room of his memory palace Hannibal chose to visit, Will was his constant companion.

It was undeniably vexing.

Hannibal’s memory palace used to be a sanctified retreat. Now, all of a sudden, it was occupied territory.

Hannibal’s first thought was that he was suffering from mental illness. How else could Will – a vengeful Will; an _autonomous_ Will – appear so freely within his closely-guarded mind? Could this be a fractured form of remorse, a manifestation of regret?

The idea was so laughable that Hannibal scarcely bothered to entertain it. No, he was quite sure that he was quite sane. And he was quite sure that there must be another explanation for Will’s appearance in his memory palace. However, he did not yet have any idea what that explanation could be. 

Worst of all, Hannibal had not yet figured out a way to work the situation to his advantage.

*

“Am I boring you…?”

Hannibal’s patient, Sebastien, bit out the question with characteristic crassness.

It was true that Hannibal was bored. It was also true that he hadn’t been paying attention to his masochistic-stockbroker-with-mommy-issues patient. There was no need for rudeness, however.

“That is the question you ask yourself every day, isn’t it, Sebastien?” Hannibal replied evenly. “You live in other people’s minds and second-guess their reactions. Because you feel that their reactions are truer than your own. They matter more.”

Sebastien sagged back in his chair.

“I just want to know why she didn’t call,” Sebastien said helplessly. “She probably meets guys every day. Big-dicked guys who are so much more interesting to her. I saw her with one of them yesterday.”

“Tell me about that experience,” said Hannibal.

As Sebastien embarked on a long, boring story about his non-girlfriend, the change in Hannibal’s demeanour would have been imperceptible to him. Hannibal slipped unnoticed into his memory palace, into a room that contained his favourite Parisian breakfast eatery, where he was joined by a familiar face.

Hannibal was vaguely aware that he’d just come close to losing a patient – and not for the first time this week.

“You seem stressed,” Alana had said when he’d seen her the evening before. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stressed,” she added, contemplating him with intelligent eyes.

In his own personal version of Paris, Hannibal watched Will eat a jam-filled croissant in one, two, three graceless bites. Crumbs fell from Will’s fingers onto the tablecloth as he fixed his usual glare on Hannibal.

Will picked up another croissant and a red, sticky blob of jam fell onto the pristine white tablecloth. Unable to hide his irritation, Hannibal reached out a hand to stop Will from further damaging the tablecloth. He yanked Will’s hand so that it was properly positioned over his plate. Then he withdrew his hand suddenly.

It was with shock that Hannibal realized he could touch Will. He could reach out and feel solid muscle and sinew beneath his fingers. This Will, here in front of him, was not a hallucination. He was – by some definition, at least – _real_.

*

Hannibal’s office within his memory palace was an amalgamation of many of his offices from across the world, past and present. It seemed fitting for a session with Will to take place there.

The office was larger and even more opulent than his current Baltimore office, filled with finery acquired from across continents and centuries. Will stood in the corner of the room, running his hands over an exquisite polished urn and leaving smudged fingerprints across its marble surface.

“I think that’s quite enough of the silent treatment, Will,” said Hannibal.

He took a seat and gestured for Will to do the same.

“Let us converse like adults,” Hannibal added.

Will said nothing, although he did move to sit down opposite Hannibal. The two men regarded each other for a long moment. Then Will finally spoke, his voice sounding hoarse and ill-used.

“Who’s Mischa?” asked Will.

Now it was Hannibal’s turn to remain silent. The number of living people to have spoken her name – to know of her existence – had suddenly swelled unbearably from one to two.

“Is she the girl who sits in the corner and cries?” asked Will.

Hannibal stirred, but said nothing.

“Does she cry because of you?” asked Will.

“No,” Hannibal said at last, feeling the word ripped from his throat.

Hannibal realized how much Will had been learning about him over the past few days ensconced in his memory palace. He’d unwittingly offered up own thoughts and experiences for Will to rifle through. His initial feeling of horror was chased by a heady new sensation: one of being understood. 

Smudged fingerprints on polished marble were beautiful in their own way, he realized.

“Tell me, Will,” he said, “what brought you here?”

“I live in a cell that’s twelve by eight feet,” said Will. “Nowhere to go in there. Except further and further into my mind.”

“And somehow into mine,” said Hannibal. “I always knew you had a gift for empathy. Perhaps even I underestimated it.” He paused. “Describe it to me. Your process of coming here.”

Will let out a short, harsh laugh that betrayed a note of sadness.

“I feel like I built a path,” said Will. “Brick by brick. Paved with hatred.”

Hannibal was silent for a long time. He leaned back and looked at Will intently from beneath hooded eyelids.

“Is hatred truly a strong enough emotion to condense time and space?” asked Hannibal.

*

Hannibal sliced open the man’s chest with surgical precision. He reached inside and grasped his heart, feeling it flex, once, twice, against his palm. Hannibal’s mind was always sharpest, clearest, after a kill. He smiled faintly, since he doubted Will would approve of this as a means of attaining clarity. Then he ended the man’s life.

Later, sated, well-fed and settled in front of the fire, Hannibal closed his eyes and entered a memory palace.

For the first time, it was a memory palace not of his own creation.

Hannibal’s memory palace was characterized by clean, straight lines. Will’s memory palace, on the other hand, was strangely bulbous. It had a distorted, dome-like sky. A churning sea ran away to an off-kilter horizon. The world’s colors were strange, and the ground tremored with a pulse like a heartbeat.

Will sat at the end of a dock, fishing. He did not seem surprised to see Hannibal.

Carefully, Hannibal took a seat next to him on worn, wooden boards. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and laid it down beside him. Will’s memory palace was warm as a summer evening in the South.

“I’ve been thinking about your question,” said Will. His voice was low; his eyes remained fixed on the water. “You already know the answer, but I’ll tell you what I think anyway. That’s how therapy works, I guess.”

“Tell me,” said Hannibal.

“Hatred isn’t an emotion at all. It’s layers of different emotions. Layers and layers.”

“What strange alchemy – what _layers_ , Will – allowed you to wander into my mind and I to wander into yours?”

Will said nothing. He flicked his fishing rod and their surroundings flexed.

The sky wouldn’t stop changing color. The heat here had texture. Will’s scent – warm and brown and musky – permeated everything. (Why had Hannibal ever removed that scent from his own memory? He couldn’t remember anymore.)

It was perhaps the most stimulating environment Hannibal had ever been in. His own memory palace, decorated with the most beautiful artefacts plundered from history, felt suddenly inadequate by comparison.

“Does our alchemy contain desire, Will?” Hannibal probed, his voice conversational. “Or is desire too banal to constitute one of your layers? Neurotransmitters firing. Chemicals colliding. So random; so imprecise.”

Will snorted. “If desire were all it took, I’d have bored my way into my Social Studies teacher’s mind in eighth grade.”

“Love, then,” Hannibal said matter-of-factly.

“Love and loathing and fear”—Will’s voice trembled here, halfway between a laugh and a sob—“and a keening, helpless need to be understood. Does that answer your question, Dr Lecter? Do you have a detailed enough psychological profile of me drawn up? Will your next great published work be on the metaphysics of whatever this is? Traversing some poor schlub’s mind – literally this time, not just figuratively.”

“I believe that a scholarly work can wait,” said Hannibal. “I believe I would rather stay here a while.”

Hannibal reached out a hand to touch Will’s forearm. It was the lightest of caresses, and though miles separated their physical selves, each felt the touch as if it were electrified.

“You can stay,” Will said. “If you like.”

Will didn’t look at him. His voice didn’t change. But the sky turned maroon and the heat in the air felt like a lover’s embrace.


End file.
